It was November at Fort Benning and that usually generally always meant rain. And we were in luck, it was raining. And you know what that means, right? Raining means training. Give that person a star. In fact, maybe even a gold star. Just not a lucky gold star. We don’t want to overdo it. Anyway, where was I. Oh yes, raining, training, November, Fort Benning, got it. You just gotta love a field training exercise in the rain. The commander decided it would be a perfect time to take our leaky tents to the field to find out how good the view of the evening sky would be from the inside of said leaky tents. Had he bothered to ask any of the soldiers, we could have told him without even setting them up. “Sir, those are some really holey tents. In fact, they pray to the rain gods every chance they get. There is no need to test them in the field.” But of course, he didn’t ask us. Not that it mattered much anyway because we really didn’t get to spend much time in the tents once we set them up in the field. And if we did have a chance to spend an evening in those tents, my point would have been, “Well, sir, we really can’t see shit from inside those tents because the rain drops are plugging all of the holes in the roof. Besides, even if they weren’t, the clouds would be hiding the damn stars, so we still wouldn’t see shit.” But what with guard duty, training, patrols, tactical marches, and raids on the OPFOR, we didn’t get to see the insides of those tents much. For this particular field training exercise, our opposing force (OPFOR) was the Armor Battalion. I think it’s really fair to play army when a bunch of DATs (Dumb Ass Tankers) go up against a bunch of grunts. Tanks against rifles. Seems like a pretty fair fight to me. It’s kind of like that old joke where the infantry soldier with a rifle doesn’t get any bullets because they are out of bullets when he goes through the line so he is told to say, “Bang. Bang. Bangedy-bang,” to simulate the bullets. And another guy goes through the line, but they are out of rifles so he is told to say, “Stab. Stab. Stabbedy-Stab,” to simulate a bayonet or K-bar. And off to battle they go. Everything is working out great until over the hill comes this big old dude from the other side saying, “Tank. Tank. Tankedy-Tank.” And everyone with the simulated bullets and bayonets thinks, “OH SHIT!” Yeah. Exactly. That’s how we felt too. Up that proverbial shit creek in a leaky canoe with no paddle. And our choice of a campsite? Right up against a goddamn creek. Now who in the hell was the wizard that came up with that genius move? My money is on the commander. Cuz only a die-hard ring-knocker (West Point Graduate) could come up with some dumb shit like that. Picture this. It’s raining like back in Noah’s time. You know. Noah, the guy with the big boat in the Bible. Except, we didn’t have any goddamn boats, big or small. And that damn creek wasn’t getting smaller as it rained. Oh hell no. It was getting so full; it was overflowing its banks. We’re talking epic flood proportions. So, where does Einstein want the machine gun emplacements? Oh, Einstein is the commander. Sorry. He wants them right up against the banks of that creek. Why? Because the OPFOR is entrenched somewhere on the other side of said creek. Does it really matter where? No. Here’s why. Let’s take a restock of the effective range of rifles – about 450 meters. Machine guns – about 800 meters. Now, compare that to the main gun on an M60A3 – about a mile to a mile and a half. Couple that to the M85 50-caliber machine gun mounted on the turret with a maximum effective range of about half a mile. That’s a lot of firepower against our primary weapons. We did have two M2 50-caliber machine guns, but they had an effective range about 300 yards shorter than that of the M85 machine guns. Essentially, we were totally outgunned. As if it really mattered because once again Einstein’s battle wisdom shined through. He wanted one of the M2 machine guns guarding the Tactical Operations Center. That had to take some solid shit-for-brains thinking to come up with that brilliant plan of action. A machine gun inside the perimeter pointed out at your own troops. Simply marvelous. Spectacular, even. That was almost as brilliant as his idea to defend a flooding creek against tanks. It’s kind of like showing up to a gunfight with a knife. Generally, things didn’t look too good for the home team. We might as well have picked the artillery battalion as the OPFOR. It wouldn’t have made much difference. A turkey shoot is a turkey shoot, no matter how big the damn guns are. Luckily, I was one of the M60 machine gun operators. Since the tents leaked like sieves, unless of course, you were in the commander’s tent, my assistant gunner and I opted to build a lean-to over our machine-gun emplacement. That was at least as effective as the tent, but I think it was better. The actual foxhole was full of water because it was below the water table. And, as usual, I didn’t pack my swimming gear. Dammit, I hate it when those things happen. For heat at night, we would light up the M60 on the cyclic rate of fire for about a thousand rounds of ammo. That would get the barrel glowing nice and orange and kicking out some serious heat. Of course, we would have to pretend to light up the ‘enemy’ every hour or so to keep the heat coming. But ammo was never a problem. It seemed like Einstein had signed for like a gazillion rounds of machine gun ammo. And if we didn’t use it here, you guessed it. We’d just get another opportunity a few months down the road. No thank you. Swimming in freezing cold water without swimming gear is not my idea of fun. Plus, every time we lit up our machine gun, it seemed like the OPFOR just had to fire up their M85s, which in turn agitated other people up and down our defensive perimeter. Pretty soon, there was a free-for-all shooting gallery with NCOs running around everywhere in the rain trying to find out exactly what in the hell was going on. Their standard question would always be, “Who in the hell started the shooting? What are you shooting at?” My standard answer would always be, “Well sarge, I don’t really know, but next time I see one of the bad guys, I’ll make sure to ask him who started the goddamn shooting. In the meantime, since they’re kind of shooting at us, we’re shooting at them.” To which they would always ask, “Can you see anything? Have you seen anything?” “You know, sarge, I ain’t seen shit, I ain’t heard shit except gunshots, but I’m soaking wet and freezing my ass off in this damn flood. Can we go home now?” “No goddamn it. Keep your eyes open and cease fire. Cease fire and don’t open fire unless I give the order.” “Roger, sarge. Willco.” And as soon as he was gone, we would light it up again. After all, we did have to generate heat some kind of way. And we couldn’t very well just light up a campfire in the rain. For starters, we couldn’t even find any dry wood to burn. So, it came to pass, a field training exercise in futility of drowning in a biblical flood.
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